Overview

"Will you take her?" she asks.

When Beth Nonte Russell travels to China to help her friend Alex adopt a baby girl from an orphanage there, she thinks it will be an adventure, a chance to see the world. But her friend, who had prepared for the adoption for many months, panics soon after being presented with the frail baby, and the situation develops into one of the greatest challenges of Russell's life.

Russell, watching in disbelief as Alex distances herself from the child, ...

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Overview

"Will you take her?" she asks.

When Beth Nonte Russell travels to China to help her friend Alex adopt a baby girl from an orphanage there, she thinks it will be an adventure, a chance to see the world. But her friend, who had prepared for the adoption for many months, panics soon after being presented with the frail baby, and the situation develops into one of the greatest challenges of Russell's life.

Russell, watching in disbelief as Alex distances herself from the child, cares for the baby — clothing, bathing, and feeding her — and makes her feel secure in the unfamiliar surroundings. Russell is overwhelmed and disoriented by the unfolding drama and all that she sees in China, and yet amid the emotional turmoil finds herself deeply bonding with the child. She begins to have dreams of an ancient past — dreams of a young woman who is plucked from the countryside and chosen to be empress, and of the child who is ultimately taken from her. As it becomes clear that her friend — whose indecisiveness about the adoption has become a torment — won't be bringing the baby home, Russell is amazed to realize that she cannot leave the baby behind and that her dreams have been telling her something significant, giving her the courage to open her heart and bring the child home against all odds.

Steeped in Chinese culture, Forever Lily is an extraordinary account of a life-changing, wholly unexpected love.

"Lyrically written and emotionally evocative, laced with the author's haunting dreams, Forever Lily is a precious gift for the reader, and will be deservedly remembered by all who turn its pages."

— Jean Sasson, New York Times bestselling author of Princess

Publishers Weekly

Russell was asked by a friend, Alex, to accompany her to China to help her pick up the baby she and her husband were adopting. While parents usually make the trip together, Alex's husband had to stay home to care for another child. Russell didn't know Alex all that well, but agreed to go anyway. In this offbeat memoir, Russell describes the trip. It wasn't long into it before she noticed signs of Alex's ambivalence— she'd brought no camera to document the baby's adoption, and she'd refused to spend more time in China than was absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, Russell was having heavily symbolic dreams: she was an empress of China pregnant with an illegitimate child who had to be given away for adoption. Before long, Alex confessed that she didn't want this baby after all, and Russell fell in love with the baby herself. In the end, Russell brought home the baby she felt she was meant to have. The foreshadowing's heavy-handed, the dreams perhaps too prescient and some apparitions—the Virgin Mary, no less— strain credulity. But spiritual-minded readers might embrace the concept of linking reincarnation, adoption and fate. (Mar.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal

First-time author Russell thrived on international travel, and with her journal in hand, she boarded a plane bound for China with her friend Alex, who was going there to adopt a baby girl. Angst more than adventure ensued when Alex began rejecting the child right away and gave her to Russell in the hotel room. Because the child didn't look like its picture and was too young, Alex began contemplating leaving the baby in China. Russell, on the other hand, who had never had a particular yearning for children, found she adored the baby and could not bear the thought of returning her to the orphanage. After the author and Alex made numerous phone calls to their respective husbands, arrangements were finally made whereby Alex would sign the adoption papers in China, but in America, the baby would be immediately placed in the foster care of the Russells, with adoption soon to follow of the child they named Lily. Russell has written a unique adoption memoir drawn from her journal, intertwining both the daily events and her nightly dreams filled with mysterious Chinese characters. A distinctive Chinese ambiance comes across, which will appeal to readers of books like Emily Prager's Wuhu Diary. Recommended for public libraries.
—Dorris Douglass

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Beth Nonte Russell received a master's degree in psychology from Marymount University and provided counseling services at a community mental health center. She lives with her husband and two daughters, Lily and Jaden, outside Washington, D.C.

Read an Excerpt

When I wake, I don't know where I am. It takes several minutes before I remember I am on my way to China, I am traveling with my friend Alex, we are going to bring home a baby. The sun is still shining, though according to my watch it is ten o'clock in the evening. We have been following the light since this morning as we have flown over the top of the world, and it has been eerie, a day with no night. We could be anywhere, it could be any time, in this moment, suspended between heaven and earth; I am flying into tomorrow, or is it yesterday?

There are still several hours before we are scheduled to land in Tokyo, and from there, we will take a three-hour flight to Beijing. I have an entire row to myself; this airplane is almost empty. Several books, all of which I am having trouble concentrating on, surround me on the seat, and the remains of a half-eaten lunch still wait to be taken away by the flight attendant. I look across the aisle and see that Alex is stretched out, sleeping. After more than a year of planning for this adoption, it must finally be starting to seem real for her; she seems distracted, withdrawn, and not in the mood to chat about the new baby or anything else.

I have spent the time on the plane trying to read, looking out at the clouds, thinking — the things I prefer to do anyway. At some point I began to meditate, but I must have fallen asleep; there was a dream, something intense...what was it? I try hard to bring it back; I recall a structure, bathed in dream-light, and as I concentrate on this image, more details begin to emerge from the shadows of sleep. I take out my notebook and pen to record what I remember:

I am standing near a pagoda, surrounded by water. I am looking at my reflection, when suddenly another reflection merges with mine. I look up to see a young Chinese man, in some type of military or royal dress. He is standing behind me. My heart rises up in joy and yet I am also afraid. I can see that I am dressed in some type of elegant robe, with elaborate embroidery and color. The man does not speak and neither do I, but we seem to understand each other without words. Somehow, I know that he loves me, and I feel my love for him rise in return. We melt together in a swirl of energy that is unlike anything I have felt before. When we finally separate, we walk together to look into the water, and see a lotus flower that is vibrating and throwing off light. In the dream I know that this flower symbolizes pure love.

The dream is a shimmering little jewel, so vivid in color and feeling. I have had so many dreams about China since I agreed to come on this trip with Alex: dreams about babies, dreams that I am Chinese and that Alex is Chinese, and a dream in which Alex's husband is a Chinese soldier trying to warn me of some danger. There have been so many dreams, in fact, that I mentioned them to Alex, in mid-October, six weeks before we were to travel to China. I am thinking of telling her about this one, too, when I hear the captain announce that we are preparing to descend. Alex joins me in my row, and we begin to gather our belongings. She is still quiet and withdrawn, her face white and tired-looking. A tiny twinge of homesickness rises in me, and there are butterflies in my stomach. It already feels as if we've been gone for a lifetime.

This morning when we met at the airport, it was cold and dark, a crystal clear December morning; our husbands and Alex's son were there to see us off. Alex lingered with them while I stood off to the side with my luggage. This was a big moment for their family, a turning point, an ending and a beginning. No longer would it be just the three of them; a new baby would join them and change their lives. I could tell they were unsure about this, hesitant, not smiling, clinging to one another. I thought of the little face in the picture Alex had shown me a few weeks ago, a black-eyed girl with sparse hair and a determined look. The orphanage had sent the picture of the baby assigned to her, and when Alex showed it to me, I asked for a copy of the photo, and then pasted it onto the front cover of the journal I would be keeping for this trip.

Writing during my travels has become a habit for me. Somehow, a trip feels incomplete if I do not end it with a set of pages recorded during the journey. So much is lost, so much not even noticed, unless it is thought about, contemplated, and integrated during the writing process. There is a shelf of travel journals in my bookcase at home, evidence that I have been somewhere, and that I have returned with something that can never be taken away: an experience. This trip is so symbolic, and certain to be fraught with emotion...traveling to get a baby; I am sure there will be much to write about, and bought an extra-large notebook so I will be sure to have enough pages.

I like to look at the picture of the baby. Last night, when I showed it to my husband, he said, "She's the cutest thing I've ever seen! Why don't you bring one back for us, too?" He was obviously joking, but for some reason, I got angry.

"You can't just do that," I said. "You can't just bring back a baby." I wonder now if my anger was a telltale sign of a desire to do just that. I wonder if seeing these orphaned babies will make me want to have one too. Just yesterday, when I was having breakfast with a friend, we were talking about the trip and I said, "I'm really glad it's not me bringing home a baby!" And I am glad, for now, that it is not me.

I am still waiting for a burning desire for a child to come upon me, to feel that almost nonnegotiable need to have a baby that so many women experience. The longing for a child, to give birth, has never manifested for me in any significant way. In my early twenties I married a divorced man with three young children, and the role of stepparent has been difficult for me. And now, for the first time in fourteen years, my husband and I are poised at the beginning of something new: a life and marriage not dominated by children.

And though I have not arrived at any conclusions about having children of my own, I was excited for Alex when she first told me of her intention to adopt. She called me last summer, and after chatting about our lives for a few minutes, she paused and then said she had something to tell me. Her voice was serious, like she had bad news to impart, but instead, she said, "We've decided to adopt. We've already gone through the home study and are completing the paperwork. We'll probably have a child in a year or so, from China."

I was surprised, and told her so; she had never mentioned that she was thinking about adopting. "I've been thinking about it for a long time, and I decided if I don't do it soon, we'll be too old. We're already too old to adopt from South Korea, which was my first choice because they bring the babies to the U.S. and you don't have to travel to a foreign country."

She told me she had then selected China, because there were mostly girl babies available, and they were healthy. "I don't know why, but I keep seeing a little girl at the dinner table with us," she said. "A little girl...it has to be a girl."

"It's wonderful," I said then, and I am still happy for her, even though right now she doesn't seem very happy herself.

The day before we left, she called and told me that she had "freaked out" the night before. She had been preparing the nursery and suddenly was overcome with the need to run from the room, from the house, from her life.

"I've never felt that way before," she said. "Never felt that desperate."

"What do you think that was about?" I asked her, concerned. She told me it had taken several hours to calm herself down, and that she was sure it was just exhaustion, concern over the details of the trip and the adoption, and last-minute jitters. She hadn't been sleeping well, she said, and had a lot on her mind. "I'll be okay," she said. "I just need to get this trip behind me."

But the effects seem to be lingering. She is definitely not herself. Several times I have tried to engage her in conversation, to no avail. I brought a book for her called Baby Signs; a colleague of mine at the mental health agency where I used to work as a psychologist gave it to me, enthusiastic about the implications for parent-child interaction. I explained to Alex that experts now believe that babies can be taught to communicate fully using hand signals. The idea is that even infants have a sophisticated understanding of the world, that all that is lacking is the means to communicate.

"This might be good for you and your new baby because she won't understand English at first," I said. "It could help you to bond." She took the book and said, "Yes, that's interesting," and then tucked it away in a bag under her seat, not interested at all.

For a year and a half, Alex and her husband have been going through the arduous process of international adoption — a marathon of paperwork, red tape, and delays. She had not spoken much about the adoption since she first told me about it, and when she called six months ago to ask if I would go with her to China, I was more than a little surprised.

"Would you consider going to China with me, to pick up the baby?" she asked. She was not yet matched with a child, she went on before I could answer, but she and her husband were making decisions about the trip and she needed a companion. They had decided that he would stay home to care for their eight-year-old son.

"We don't want to take him out of school for ten days; plus, it's too long of a trip for him," she said.

When she asked again, would I come with her to China, I heard myself saying yes before even thinking. It would be an exciting adventure, another country to add to my list of places in the world that I had seen with my own eyes, and a chance to see how this business of international adoption actually works.

Alex and I have known each other for years, and yet, I would not consider us close. We met as neighbors, and ours was a social friendship; we saw each other a few times a year, at dinner with our husbands or in groups with other friends. We bonded initially because of shared circumstances: when we met, we had both recently become stepparents, and we talked often about the difficulties inherent in that role. Neither one of us had other friends who were stepparents at the time, and we became a sort of touchstone for each other when either of us needed to discuss some aspect of family life. Our families celebrated birthdays and holidays together on occasion; but there is something about Alex, a reserve or detachment, that I have never felt I could breach. In some sense she has remained aloof and unknowable, an enigma, a mystery.

And then to ask me this, to go to China...After my initial positive reaction, I began to have reservations. This trip is so important; I asked Alex if there was a family member or a very close friend who could provide the kind of support necessary. What I meant, but didn't say, was "Why me?" Would our friendship withstand the intimacies of travel, not to mention an adoption? In some ways, I could rationalize this as a continuation of our support of each other around the issues of stepchildren, children, and family life. But in a deeper sense, I felt that this request pushed outside the bounds set for the relationship.

Alex explained that she had asked me to come because she needed an experienced traveler to go with her, someone who would not easily be thrown off stride. She had heard tales of my travels over the years, the places I had visited sometimes on a whim — the long trips by myself to Europe and South America. This is what she explained, but I had the sense that, deep down, even she did not know why she had chosen me.

She had settled on my travel history as her reason, but what she did not know was that my trips were not travel for the sake of travel alone, but always a looking, a searching for something, some piece of myself. My life had been made up of attempts to bury an old self, a person who no longer existed, a person who perhaps never existed, a self patched together from borrowed ideas. My trips were a way to tunnel into the dark country inside myself, a place I could visit only when I was outside the geographic bounds of my day-to-day existence.

It dawned on me the day Alex called, a day after I returned from a trip that had exhausted me and left me depressed, that perhaps looking for a piece of myself in some far-off location might not make much sense. Was travel just an escape, a way of fooling myself into believing that my life was moving forward when in fact it was standing still?

A vague sense of emptiness, of something missing, of not being where I should be, had haunted me for a lifetime. I was ready to admit that travel had not cured me, that nothing had cured me. The day before Alex called, I had decided to stay put for a while, to try living inside the life I had created in my suburban house, with my husband, my dogs — and my chronic discontent, the source of which I had yet to identify.

"It" eluded me, the "it" that would pull the world together and show that the world made eminent sense. I was looking for an answer, searching for a system, grasping at this and experimenting with that, but nothing coalesced, nothing calmed my spirit for long. As my discontent became more entrenched, as it became like a sort of grief, I began to panic...what was it, what was it, what was it? I did not know, and I began to think there might not be an answer, that maybe there were no answers at all. I had a growing sense that life was moving on and my dreams were dying. My life stretched out before me, a wasteland of time.

Introduction

TouchstoneReading Group GuideForever LilyDiscussion Questions

1. What does the author reveal about her personal life and character in the first chapter by telling her story in the first person? What do we know about her that she does not tell us explicitly? Why do you think the author chose to use the present tense to tell this story?

2. Considering they weren't the closest of friends, why do you think Beth agreed to accompany Alex to China? Why do you think Alex asked Beth to come with her to China?

3. When the adoption agency brings the baby to Alex, she is markedly disappointed. What is your opinion of Alex at this moment? What are your feelings toward Alex by the end of the book?

4. What would you do if you were an adoptive mother and you did not bond with your prospective child? If the author had not accompanied Alex to China, what do you think would have happened to the baby?

5. Do you think the author was destined to go to China and adopt Lily? If what happened was destiny, and events were meant to unfold as they did, how does this affect your feelings about Alex? What role does choice play in destiny?

6. When the author confesses her need to adopt Lily to her husband, are you surprised by his response? What does this tell you about their relationship? How would such a situation have been handled in your own marriage or primary relationship?

7. How do the author's dreams relate to what is happening during her waking hours? What do the dreams add to the telling of the story? Have you personally experienced significant dreams that have had an impact on your life?

8. In the prologue to Forever Lily, Russell writes, "Dying is nothing like wesuppose." Is the author talking about death literally or metaphorically? When looking at the dream sequences in Forever Lily, what does death symbolize to the author?

9. After reading Forever Lily, what are your impressions of China? Did they change as a result of reading this? Compare how women are viewed in the United States as opposed to how they are viewed in China.

10. In Forever Lily, spiritual thought and prayer play a major role in how the author processes her experience. Do you think the outcome would have been the same had this not been the case? Why or why not?

Activities

1. Invite parents who have adopted a child from another country to your reading group to share the challenges they faced, from the initial decision-making process, to how they dealt with the confusing paperwork, to traveling to their child's country of origin, to life in the United States afterward.

2. Set the mood for your Forever Lily reading group meeting by playing Chinese music and serving Chinese food. The author recommends "Silk Road Journeys," by the cellist Yo Yo Ma, and music from the Beijing Angelic Children's Choir, both of which she used while writing Forever Lily.

3. Research the symbols that are most prevalent in Forever Lily and discuss their meaning in Chinese and esoteric mythology. For example: the dragon, the lotus, shoes, the dove, the kite, etc.

4. Discuss personal experiences of your own that may have been outside the norm, such as strange dreams or visions, and explore the ways in which they made an impact on your life or a decision-making process.

Interview with Beth Nonte Russell

1. Since you were not a working writer at the time you went to China, how did you come to the decision to write Forever Lily, and why?

Though I had never written for publication, writing was something I enjoyed and did regularly before this trip took place. When I returned from China, I knew beyond a doubt that I would write this story and try to share it with others. It felt quite different in that there was a strong urge to tell others about the abandoned children that I had seen in the orphanage there; I felt obligated to be their voice. Thoughts of those children would not let me go, and I began writing the book a year after I returned. One night, I finally sat down and wrote the passages that describe the orphanage visit, and that section, those images, became the heart of the book.

2. Now that time has passed and you have perspective on what happened during your first trip to China, why do you think Alex asked you to accompany her?

I believe that she was prompted to do so by an unconscious need to balance the karma between us. As the experience in China proved to me, there is always much more at work in any given situation than we are aware of on a conscious level, and in the case of Alex and my friendship, I believe the "much more" that was at work was a karmic debt from a past lifetime in which she was instrumental in my having lost a child. In this lifetime, she was given the opportunity to balance that debt by asking me to accompany her to China, and I was given the opportunity to accept a gift of love into my life.

3. What is your relationship with Alex and her family today?

My husband and Alex's husband made an agreement that following the adoption hearing we would have no further contact between our families. We all agreed this was best for everyone concerned, especially Lily, and we have never regretted that decision.

4. What were the biggest differences between your experiences with mothering your stepchildren and your adoptive children? What were the biggest factors that contributed to these differences?

In the case of my stepchildren, they already had a mother whom they loved and who loved them. I played a parental role, but not a central role, in their lives. I was not their mother, and therefore the emotional connection was of a different nature, perhaps less intense. I don't consider Lily and Jaden my "adoptive" children; they are just my children in the most complete sense. Their father and I have total responsibility for their welfare, and I doubt they think of me as their "adoptive" mother.... I am their mother with no qualifiers attached to that term.

5. The dream sequences are quite detailed and follow a distinct narrative path. Were they changed or embellished for the telling of Forever Lily?

The dreams as I experienced them in China were less complete and more fractured than the way I recount them in the book. When I returned from China, I spent many hours in meditation, reentering the dreams, which were actually a past-life experience. In that way, I was able to gain access to the narrative of that lifetime as well as minute and colorful details. In writing the book, I combined actual dreams with details, which I found out later through those meditations, in order to give the reader a sense that the dreams were indicating a complete lifetime.

6. Memoir is one of the most risky literary forms because one person's "truth" can be quite a bit different from another person's "truth," which can have profound consequences on relationships. How did you decide which aspects of your life to include in Forever Lily?

The experience of reality is always subjective. With Forever Lily, I did not set out to write a memoir, to tell "about" my life; instead, I hoped to give the reader a chance to share the experience and bridge the gap of subjectivity. My primary intention was to let the reader enter my internal psychological, emotional, and spiritual process as it took place in the context of this particular event. And also, I hoped to show that the transformation which occurred for me during this trip was not random or sudden; the forces of that transformation had been building for many years. For that reason, I included only those things from my life which I felt would be helpful in understanding how and why this happened the way that it did, hoping that perhaps it would give others a road map for their own transformational process.

7. In the five years between your visits, China had changed dramatically. When you adopted your second daughter, what were the biggest differences in the process?

The two trips were dramatically different, but not so much because of the five-year interval or the changes within China. They were different because the second adoption was intentional on our part, and we were able to prepare emotionally in a way that was not possible in the first adoption. Another big difference was that our girls came from different regions of a vast country. During the first trip, we traveled to very poor, rural areas in central China, which was grueling; in the second, we stayed in the large and thriving southern city of Guangzhou with all the amenities that city had to offer. My sense was that the process of adoption had not changed much, if at all, in the five-year span between trips.

8. Why was Josephine worried for you while you were in China?

The answer to that question is actually very complicated. Though Josephine is not psychic, she is gifted in being able to discern certain things in the metaphysical realm which are outside most people's awareness. In her view, something of immense importance was taking place while I was in China, and her concern was that something would happen to prevent it from unfolding. She was concerned for both my spiritual and my physical safety, mainly because the lifetime which this event was resolving had ended in my premature physical death in ancient China. Events have a tendency to repeat themselves until the cycles are broken, and my bringing this baby home safely was a breakthrough in that regard, for me as well as for the many others involved in both lifetimes, including Josephine herself.

9. How did Josephine react to your decision to adopt a second baby? Is she still your spiritual advisor?

Josephine's goal as a spiritual advisor is to help the client understand and utilize his or her own power, which is always within. My original agreement with her was to work together for three years, and when that time was up, we continued to speak often, though our work together became more of a partnership. She gave advice and counsel based on her understandings, but in the end, it was always up to me to decide the best course of action. When I first told her I was going to China, she advised me not to go, and when I told her of my plans to adopt a second child, in her opinion, it was not a good idea. But once the decisions were made, whether I took her advice or not, she could help me to make the most of the situation by utilizing prayer and helping me to understand the situation in a much deeper way.

10. What is your favorite aspect of the Chinese culture? How do you share these customs with your children?

Though I have grown to love many things about China, I am not an expert on Chinese culture. There is so much focus on these girls being Chinese, but in my view, I am raising two American daughters who happen to have been born in China. They spent the earliest few months of their lives there and will spend the great majority of their lives here, but I do hope that at some point they will have an interest in the land of their birth. To that end, I have begun a library of books about China for my daughters to read when they are ready, and I also hope to travel with them to China many times in the coming years. Because Chinese history is complicated, especially where the circumstances of their lives are concerned, it is important to be very thoughtful in the way Chinese culture is discussed with them. My hope is that my girls will gain a deeper understanding of China over time and be able to make their own decisions about how far they want to take that interest.

Reading Group Guide

Touchstone Reading Group Guide Forever Lily Discussion Questions

1. What does the author reveal about her personal life and character in the first chapter by telling her story in the first person? What do we know about her that she does not tell us explicitly? Why do you think the author chose to use the present tense to tell this story?

2. Considering they weren't the closest of friends, why do you think Beth agreed to accompany Alex to China? Why do you think Alex asked Beth to come with her to China?

3. When the adoption agency brings the baby to Alex, she is markedly disappointed. What is your opinion of Alex at this moment? What are your feelings toward Alex by the end of the book?

4. What would you do if you were an adoptive mother and you did not bond with your prospective child? If the author had not accompanied Alex to China, what do you think would have happened to the baby?

5. Do you think the author was destined to go to China and adopt Lily? If what happened was destiny, and events were meant to unfold as they did, how does this affect your feelings about Alex? What role does choice play in destiny?

6. When the author confesses her need to adopt Lily to her husband, are you surprised by his response? What does this tell you about their relationship? How would such a situation have been handled in your own marriage or primary relationship?

7. How do the author's dreams relate to what is happening during her waking hours? What do the dreams add to the telling of the story? Have you personally experienced significant dreams that have had an impact on your life?

8. In the prologue to Forever Lily, Russell writes, "Dying is nothing like we suppose." Is the author talking about death literally or metaphorically? When looking at the dream sequences in Forever Lily, what does death symbolize to the author?

9. After reading Forever Lily, what are your impressions of China? Did they change as a result of reading this? Compare how women are viewed in the United States as opposed to how they are viewed in China.

10. In Forever Lily, spiritual thought and prayer play a major role in how the author processes her experience. Do you think the outcome would have been the same had this not been the case? Why or why not?

Activities

1. Invite parents who have adopted a child from another country to your reading group to share the challenges they faced, from the initial decision-making process, to how they dealt with the confusing paperwork, to traveling to their child's country of origin, to life in the United States afterward.

2. Set the mood for your Forever Lily reading group meeting by playing Chinese music and serving Chinese food. The author recommends "Silk Road Journeys," by the cellist Yo Yo Ma, and music from the Beijing Angelic Children's Choir, both of which she used while writing Forever Lily.

3. Research the symbols that are most prevalent in Forever Lily and discuss their meaning in Chinese and esoteric mythology. For example: the dragon, the lotus, shoes, the dove, the kite, etc.

4. Discuss personal experiences of your own that may have been outside the norm, such as strange dreams or visions, and explore the ways in which they made an impact on your life or a decision-making process.

Interview with Beth Nonte Russell

1. Since you were not a working writer at the time you went to China, how did you come to the decision to write Forever Lily, and why?

Though I had never written for publication, writing was something I enjoyed and did regularly before this trip took place. When I returned from China, I knew beyond a doubt that I would write this story and try to share it with others. It felt quite different in that there was a strong urge to tell others about the abandoned children that I had seen in the orphanage there; I felt obligated to be their voice. Thoughts of those children would not let me go, and I began writing the book a year after I returned. One night, I finally sat down and wrote the passages that describe the orphanage visit, and that section, those images, became the heart of the book.

2. Now that time has passed and you have perspective on what happened during your first trip to China, why do you think Alex asked you to accompany her?

I believe that she was prompted to do so by an unconscious need to balance the karma between us. As the experience in China proved to me, there is always much more at work in any given situation than we are aware of on a conscious level, and in the case of Alex and my friendship, I believe the "much more" that was at work was a karmic debt from a past lifetime in which she was instrumental in my having lost a child. In this lifetime, she was given the opportunity to balance that debt by asking me to accompany her to China, and I was given the opportunity to accept a gift of love into my life.

3. What is your relationship with Alex and her family today?

My husband and Alex's husband made an agreement that following the adoption hearing we would have no further contact between our families. We all agreed this was best for everyone concerned, especially Lily, and we have never regretted that decision.

4. What were the biggest differences between your experiences with mothering your stepchildren and your adoptive children? What were the biggest factors that contributed to these differences?

In the case of my stepchildren, they already had a mother whom they loved and who loved them. I played a parental role, but not a central role, in their lives. I was not their mother, and therefore the emotional connection was of a different nature, perhaps less intense. I don't consider Lily and Jaden my "adoptive" children; they are just my children in the most complete sense. Their father and I have total responsibility for their welfare, and I doubt they think of me as their "adoptive" mother.... I am their mother with no qualifiers attached to that term.

5. The dream sequences are quite detailed and follow a distinct narrative path. Were they changed or embellished for the telling of Forever Lily?

The dreams as I experienced them in China were less complete and more fractured than the way I recount them in the book. When I returned from China, I spent many hours in meditation, reentering the dreams, which were actually a past-life experience. In that way, I was able to gain access to the narrative of that lifetime as well as minute and colorful details. In writing the book, I combined actual dreams with details, which I found out later through those meditations, in order to give the reader a sense that the dreams were indicating a complete lifetime.

6. Memoir is one of the most risky literary forms because one person's "truth" can be quite a bit different from another person's "truth," which can have profound consequences on relationships. How did you decide which aspects of your life to include in Forever Lily?

The experience of reality is always subjective. With Forever Lily, I did not set out to write a memoir, to tell "about" my life; instead, I hoped to give the reader a chance to share the experience and bridge the gap of subjectivity. My primary intention was to let the reader enter my internal psychological, emotional, and spiritual process as it took place in the context of this particular event. And also, I hoped to show that the transformation which occurred for me during this trip was not random or sudden; the forces of that transformation had been building for many years. For that reason, I included only those things from my life which I felt would be helpful in understanding how and why this happened the way that it did, hoping that perhaps it would give others a road map for their own transformational process.

7. In the five years between your visits, China had changed dramatically. When you adopted your second daughter, what were the biggest differences in the process?

The two trips were dramatically different, but not so much because of the five-year interval or the changes within China. They were different because the second adoption was intentional on our part, and we were able to prepare emotionally in a way that was not possible in the first adoption. Another big difference was that our girls came from different regions of a vast country. During the first trip, we traveled to very poor, rural areas in central China, which was grueling; in the second, we stayed in the large and thriving southern city of Guangzhou with all the amenities that city had to offer. My sense was that the process of adoption had not changed much, if at all, in the five-year span between trips.

8. Why was Josephine worried for you while you were in China?

The answer to that question is actually very complicated. Though Josephine is not psychic, she is gifted in being able to discern certain things in the metaphysical realm which are outside most people's awareness. In her view, something of immense importance was taking place while I was in China, and her concern was that something would happen to prevent it from unfolding. She was concerned for both my spiritual and my physical safety, mainly because the lifetime which this event was resolving had ended in my premature physical death in ancient China. Events have a tendency to repeat themselves until the cycles are broken, and my bringing this baby home safely was a breakthrough in that regard, for me as well as for the many others involved in both lifetimes, including Josephine herself.

9. How did Josephine react to your decision to adopt a second baby? Is she still your spiritual advisor?

Josephine's goal as a spiritual advisor is to help the client understand and utilize his or her own power, which is always within. My original agreement with her was to work together for three years, and when that time was up, we continued to speak often, though our work together became more of a partnership. She gave advice and counsel based on her understandings, but in the end, it was always up to me to decide the best course of action. When I first told her I was going to China, she advised me not to go, and when I told her of my plans to adopt a second child, in her opinion, it was not a good idea. But once the decisions were made, whether I took her advice or not, she could help me to make the most of the situation by utilizing prayer and helping me to understand the situation in a much deeper way.

10. What is your favorite aspect of the Chinese culture? How do you share these customs with your children?

Though I have grown to love many things about China, I am not an expert on Chinese culture. There is so much focus on these girls being Chinese, but in my view, I am raising two American daughters who happen to have been born in China. They spent the earliest few months of their lives there and will spend the great majority of their lives here, but I do hope that at some point they will have an interest in the land of their birth. To that end, I have begun a library of books about China for my daughters to read when they are ready, and I also hope to travel with them to China many times in the coming years. Because Chinese history is complicated, especially where the circumstances of their lives are concerned, it is important to be very thoughtful in the way Chinese culture is discussed with them. My hope is that my girls will gain a deeper understanding of China over time and be able to make their own decisions about how far they want to take that interest.

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Customer Reviews

Anonymous

Posted February 10, 2012

i know her...

i havent read the book but i know lily russel she goes to my school omg!

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Anonymous

Posted August 18, 2011

Good Book

I am a Social Work student and did a project on China's lost children and how often girls are "thrown away" and abandoned. I have a little cousin who is about 6 now that was adopted from China. I became interested and wanted to read more...I stumbled upon this book. The picture is what drew me in actually. It is a great book about an unexpected addition to a family.

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Wow great book

I actually bought this book at the $0.99 store and was amazed at how great of a read it was. From the very beginning I was riveted. I would recommend it to anybody who works with children from disadvantaged areas or who just wants a bit if insight into the lives of others

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ncsu4ganne

Posted April 27, 2009

I Also Recommend:

Fantastic Read!!!

I read this book about 2 years ago & the story has stayed with me. Halfway through the book I had to look back to be sure that this was non-fiction. It was such an amazing story.
I disagree with the other reviewer that said that Beth took advantage of Alex. It was very obvious that Alex was not a bit unsure & in need of simple encouragement but that she did not want this child & was even repelled by the sight of her. I feel that Lily was meant to be Beth's child just the same if she had given birth to her. God put her there for that reason - that's why Alex asked an acquaintance (Beth) to accompany her to China.
I am recommending this book for my book club & hope it makes our list. I think it will lead to a very lively discussion. This is one of my top 10 favorite books! MUST READ!!

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Anonymous

Posted August 14, 2007

ok read!

I could not believe the way Alex kept flip-flopping for the most bizarre reasons such as the age of the baby. This woman was unstable and thank goodness for Beth.

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Anonymous

Posted June 7, 2007

The Traveling Companion from Hell

I don't know where to begin. Let me just say I am an adoptive mother of 3 daughters including one from China. The descriptions of the adoption process and the beautiful city of Guangzhou in this book are dead on. BUT---the story is horrifying. Beth virtually stole Alex's child from her while Alex was having very real but very normal anxieties about adoption with her husband half a world away. Each time I went through the adoption process I had HUGE doubts particularly with my Chinese adoption. If I didn't have a ton of support I may have made terrible decisions about whether or not I was doing the right thing. God forbid I traveled with Beth, as my beautiful and much loved daughter may be living with her instead of in our family right now. It is totally normal to have severe post-partum style depression in the adoption process. Beth took advantage of that in a big way rather than being a friend and support to Alex. While I have no doubt that Lily is in a loving home, my heart aches for Alex and the horrible ending to her story.

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